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Rescue operations were under way in Florida on Thursday as officials sought to assess the damage inflicted by Hurricane Milton as it crossed the state overnight, triggering widespread flooding and leaving millions without power.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Thursday morning said state search and rescue teams were engaged in 125 active missions, with 48 people successfully rescued from torrential floodwater and destroyed buildings.
The Tampa Bay area was spared the catastrophic storm surge that was feared, although Sarasota County — where Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm — encountered a surge of up to 10 feet in places.
“What we can say is the storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario,” DeSantis said.
Tampa mayor Jane Castor on Thursday said “one of the blessings” was that the city avoided the predicted storm surge. “That saved a lot,” she said.
By early Thursday, wind speeds had reduced to 90mph, and Milton dropped to a category one hurricane as it crossed central Florida towards the Atlantic Ocean.
More than 3.4mn homes and businesses were without power in the state by 11am local time on Thursday, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks utility reports across the US.
More than 2,000 flights around the US were cancelled because of the storm, most of them connecting to Orlando, Tampa, Palm Beach, Miami and Southwest Florida International Airport, said FlightAware, an airline tracking service.
Four deaths were recorded after tornadoes formed in St Lucie county on Florida’s east coast, according to county spokesperson Erick Gill. The county did not have a mandatory evacuation order in place. “We did not expect to see the tornado activity that we saw yesterday,” he said.
Milton is the second hurricane to hit the southern US in a fortnight. It comes after Hurricane Helene wreaked havoc across several south-eastern states last month, killing more than 225 people and destroying roads across western North Carolina.
Economists at Citigroup estimated Hurricane Helene alone would likely drag down monthly jobs growth by at least tens of thousands of positions, a number that could swell above 100,000 when combined with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.
Additional reporting by Colby Smith in Washington and Attracta Mooney in London
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